We’re Getting Quite a Blow Here in the Living Room

My exasperation with the fake hurricane news industry is getting worse.

Here is the situation right now. Hurricane Irma, which is supposedly “bigger than Texas” is something like 250 miles from Miami. It’s northwest of a Cuban city called Moron (seriously). Texas is 800 miles wide. That means Miami should be over 150 miles into the hurricane right now. “Hurricane” means sustained winds of at least 75 mph. “Tropical storm” means 39 mph or more.

Get ready for some vexing figures.

The forecast on one site says Miami will have 25-35 mph winds today. That means 25 is the low side. Another site says 44. I checked the winds. Here is the actual figure (from a site which is predicting high winds on another page): 2.4.

That spot between the 2 and the 4 is a decimal point, not a typo.

Miami’s channel 7 is always the hysteria nerve center of Dade County, but right now, their website features some oddly comforting news. It has a page where you can see the marine forecast. During a real hurricane, seas will be maybe 20 feet high. Current figure: 2-3 feet. That is a hyphen between the 2 and the 3.

If you’re not a boater, let me tell you what 2-3 feet means. It’s ideal fishing weather. It can’t get much better.

Right now, immediately next to a city which is half-abandoned, you could sit in your boat with a case of beer and enjoy yourself, catching bonefish.

You tell me: how big do the glaring discrepancies have to get before we can call them lies?

If the forecast says 25 mph, minimum, then the wind should be at least 25 mph, right now. Minimum means “lowest value.” It should not be possible to see 2.4 mph on a day when the forecast says 25-35 mph.

I expect the wind to increase. I don’t think Miami will have 2-3 foot seas when Irma is at its closest, 100 miles away. I don’t think the winds will be down around 2.4 mph. But the weather people have presented strong evidence that the claims of 96 mph and so on have no support at all.

Is it possible they’re not lying? Maybe they’re using old data. Maybe they don’t update the local forecasts as fast as the big picture. I doubt that, however. Why would there be a difference? They know people are sitting at their PC’s or looking at their phones, waiting for news.

I smell lawyers and TV executives in all this. Lawyers always advise us to scare people as much as possible, so we can say they were warned when they sue us. TV executives want people scared so they’ll watch TV, and they don’t want viewers who didn’t prepare for storms to crucify them over coverage that was not sufficiently neurotic. The NHC brass probably pushes for overreaction, too.

I get it. People need to be awakened. They need to be sobered up so they’ll prepare. But lying after the danger has abated does not serve that purpose.

Barring a very unlikely event, Irma’s major winds will never get close to Miami or even the east coast of Florida, above the Keys. Let’s take a deep breath and face the truth: things look much better for the east coast than they did five days ago. It’s okay to admit it.

I should have done a much better job, getting ready for the storm. There is no denying that. But now that the outlook has improved greatly, I should not have to scour ten websites to find the good news, and I should not be seeing dishonest or misinformed Weather Channel personnel telling me the winds will be over a hundred mph over a hundred miles from the center of the storm.

If I were depending on TV and swallowing everything they said, I would have a very distorted picture of the immediate future right now. I would think I was in very serious trouble. I had to work to find the truth. I could not rely on the people whose job is to bring the truth to me. They are worse than useless. They make things worse.

Accuweather, which appears to be somewhat less panic-driven than the other outlets, says Miami should get eleven or twelve hours of winds over 60 mph. No mention of hurricane-force winds. I think we can cut the speeds by about 30%, to factor out the lawyers.

Miami looks pretty good, so on to Ocala. Right now, Accuweather is predicting maximum sustained winds of 58 mph for my area. Gusts could be a lot higher. They think we’ll get about ten hours of tropical storm winds. That’s not terrible. Gusts are local in nature, and they are brief. On top of that, if they’re predicting 58, we will probably see 35. If I had to guess, and my life depended on it, I’d predict that even mobile homes will make it, with a few exceptions.

It’s sad that I have to dig for the truth like this.

My friends and I are praying again today. Leah’s rental house is on track for a direct hit. I want this storm to go south and west and move farther from the coast. Join us if you will.

The NOAA discussion said the ridge that pushed Irma down was surprisingly strong. I would say that’s the result of God, reacting to prayer. Things that don’t make sense have supernatural causes. If God is willing to push Irma away from Miami, he will probably be willing to keep confounding the forecasters by pushing it away from Cudjoe Key and Ocala.

The current NOAA discussion says there is “good agreement” that Irma will follow the current track. Isn’t that interesting? Does that remind you of anything? The Beast always takes polls, because he has to guess. When God gives guidance, there is no need for consensus. He hands down the word, and that’s it. Weaker spirits and human beings have to vote and confer. When the true prophets of the Bible were in conflict with the fakers, it was generally one prophet against a herd of frauds who were in “good agreement” that he was wrong. They had a consensus. Only one individual knows where Irma is headed, unless he has told some of his servants.

The forecasters, who are, by definition, secular prophets, were in good agreement that Miami was going to be hit directly. Over the last few days, God has consistently proven them wrong. I will keep trying to persuade him to continue. This storm would look great as a disintegrated blob in the Gulf. I wish we God’s model, to put on the map with the computer models.

More blogging as news develops or fails to do so.